PERSISTENCE & PROVENANCE
“I actually very much enjoy the opportunity to serve as an expert witness and dive into some of these topics to help provide more context for everybody. I’m very much a social historian.”
— Ashley Hlebinsky, firearms historian, consultant, and television personality
Her eyes widen and light up. The air is still, but tense. Steady, and with precision, she begins, focused. It’s a slide-action, repeater. She knows she has but one chance to be accurate, and she knows she will not miss. She … opens her mouth and begins to speak as a hush falls over the courtroom. She is Ashley Hlebinsky, expert witness, Curator Emerita and Senior Firearms Scholar of the Cody Firearms Museum, former Smithsonian Fellow and firearms consultant.
You might have thought that opening was leading you to the range, a combat scenario or even a movie scene, but unorthodox approaches are Hlebinsky’s preferred ammo. “I didn’t grow up around guns at all,” explains the historian. “My dad’s hobby was golf, my mother was a professional figure skater, and I was a competitive ballroom dancer.” Ten orthopedic surgeries as a child had Hlebinsky focused on a future in the medical field, but a fateful trip as a student at the Gettysburg National Military Park changed everything. “I ended up going on a Civil War medicine tour at Gettysburg, not far from where I grew up, and they talked about how the advancement of weapon technology actually altered how medical technology had to function on the battlefield. And so, the injuries were very different. The conical shape tends to shatter bone more often — you get a chance at a clean break with a round, musket ball. I’d never really thought about medicine in the terms of technology for war changing how doctors had to function. So, I got really interested in that and changed my major to history, and my mom told me that, “I better have a job by the end of it.”
Indeed, she did find a job. Or should I say, she created one. A few of them actually. Not unlike an experienced shooter, Hlebinsky hunted down and stalked her career, refining her interest and unique perspectives by serving a valuable role for the industry in the form of a museum curator, expert witness, and firearms historian, as well as subsequent roles in consultancy and content. Don’t let the age fool you, her career is the result of very hard work, with unmatched persistence. “I did my grad work at University of Delaware while I researched in the Smithsonian collection in Washington, D.C., so, I would drive a half hour to Perryville, Maryland, and I would park in the free parking
